Sometimes Jeb takes a notion. Been that way all his life. Don’t matter how hare-brained or loonie-goonie, it’s his notion ‘n’ there ain’t no changing his mind. Well this time he went too far ‘n’ it durned near kilt him.
The other day I calls him up on the phone. I cain’t remember what fer. Maybe to talk about all the construction that’s been going on. They’ve been grading the old farmsteads ‘n’ laying out stakes to mark the streets where they’re gonna build houses ‘n’ stores ‘n’ such. Makes an unholy racket from sunup to sundown. So maybe that’s what I wants to talk about when I calls Jeb on the phone.
The point is: when he finally answers, he’s pure gibberish. All blabdy-blabdy-blab. I haven’t got me a friggin clue what he’s tryna tell me. My first thought is: “My God, Jeb’s gone ‘n’ took hisself a stroke.” I tells him not to worry, to sit hisself down on the floor if need be. I’ll be right there.
It’s more’n two, maybe three hundred yards up to his place. Considering the suspenders trailing ‘n’ the shirt tails flapping behind, ‘n’ considering the grubby work boots on my feet, I make the run in pretty good time. Good fer an old geezer like me.
I bang on the door then barge right on in. Jeb’s standing there, clean shaven, dressed fer spit. I grab him by the shoulders, panic in my eyes ‘n’ a quaver in my voice: “You okay, Jeb? You okay?”
He just smiles ‘n’ says: “Bonjour, Jed, mon ami.”
What the frig? I haven’t heard Jeb try to parlez-vous le ding dong since we was in high school. By my reckoning that was sixty years ago or more. Hell, the man can barely speak English ‘n’ not half so good as me. But there he is, being all “Bonjour, Jed, mon ami.”
I says to him: “You must be sick. Sicker’n I thought.” I make him sit on the bottom step of the stairs that come down into the front hall. “You wait here whiles I getchya some water.” But he just ups ‘n’ follows me into the kitchen.
“Ah Jed.” He’s got this gravelly sound to his voice ‘n’ a wistful look in his eyes, like he’s smoking Moroccan cigarettes ‘n’ staring off the Pont Neuf. I don’t know if there’s such a thing as Moroccan cigarettes; I just figure that’s where Camels must come from. The point is—screw the point. I just wish Jeb would act like his old self.
“Je veux parler français—jusqu’à la mort.”
“Juice cat what?”
I have no idea what he’s tryna tell me. Besides which I’m losin’ my patience. This stunt of his has cost me a mighty good sweat running up the hill, huffing ‘n’ wheezing, ‘n’ my heart going like a sump pump. I pour myself a cold glass of water. Jeb’s ‘n’ mine’s the only homes left in the whole region what draws their water from wells. Two hundred ‘n’ fifty feet deep. Cold like ice. Clear as crystal.
“Hier, j’ai lu quelque chose d’intéressant.”
“Speak English ya twit.”
But he refuses. So we carry on our conversation in a mix of charades, twenty questions, ‘n’ a high school French that’s lain stale for sixty-five years.
“Je veux understandey what tu is tryna dites à moi,” I says to him. “Tu ne veux pas speak the English?”
He nods.
“Ever again?”
“Oui. C’est ça.”
“Until the day you die?”
“Jusqu’à la mort.”
“Why, pray tell, oh great ‘n’ wise nincompoop of a friend?”
Jeb steps to the kitchen table (which is French for table) where magazines, once stacked, have fallen this way ‘n’ that so’s half the friggin table is hid. He flips through one, then another, ’til he finds what he’s lookin’ fer ‘n’ shoves the open magazine into my hands. It’s Psychology Tomorrow or one of them other goddam pop magazines with quick-fix answers to all life’s problems. Jeb’s opened it to an article about—what’s it say?—”the cognitive benefits of speaking another language.” Well now, I’ll be the first to admit that Jeb ‘n’ me, we ain’t getting any younger, ‘n’ both of us lately, well we’ve been getting’ a little slow on the uptake when it comes to jokes ‘n’ such, ‘n’, well, we both have been losing more’n our fair share of keys ‘n’ odds ‘n’ ends. But we both do pretty durned good for our age. It’s one thing to say yer gonna learn another language; it’s quite another thing to say yer gonna stop using the one you was bornt with, eh?
That sends Jeb diving into all those magazines of his ‘n’ he comes up this time with an article on how the brain learns a language and how it’s important to be immersed in it proper like.
“Hell, Jeb,” I says. “There ain’t another frenchie within a ten mile radius of this here farm. Look it yer pond fer crissake. There ain’t been a frog on that water fer coming on four years. Now if that ain’t a sign, I don’t know what is.”
Jeb tells me to ne pas être such a bone tête.
Ain’t that just Jeb to go on like he’s so much better’n the rest of the world. “Fine,” I says. “You wanna act all hoity toity like yer some goddam frenchie, then fine, but just fer the record: I think you’d end up learnin’ more French livin’ with Marcel Marceau than you would doin’ it this way. I betchya don’t even last a week.”
Well, that gets Jeb all indignant. He calls me all kinds of names like cochon ‘n’ turd d’oiseau ‘n’ bête midler. I stomp out of his place ‘n’ back home. I’ll be watchin’ him, that’s fer sure. I’ll tell everyone I know and we’ll keep our eyes on him. See how long he goes before he has to use English like a normal person.
That afternoon, I get a call from Ned at Ned’s Groceries ‘n’ Fertilizer Depot. Seems Jeb dropped by to pick up his weekly fix of ham ‘n’ cheese fer all his sandwiches ‘n’ Western omelets ‘n’ whatnot. Walks in all snootier-than-thou ‘n’ asks fer jambon et du frommage like Ned’s gonna ever know what that’s all about. Well, I’ve already called Ned to warn him about Jeb’s latest notion, so Ned’s prepared fer this nonsense. Soon as Jeb asks fer his jambon et du frommage, Ned says: “Why can’t you speak English like everybody else around here, ya goddam foreigner?”
Jeb just puts his paws over his ears and says: “No Engleesh. No Engleesh. Je ne peux pas vous comprendre.”
Well that just gets Ned as riled as a porcupine in heat. There he is, yellin’ at Jeb ‘n’ there Jeb is, yellin’ at Ned. Wouldn’t you know it but a police officer walks into the store, some new fella Ned’s never seen before.
He says: “Well now, what seems to be the problem?” I mean what the hell else does police officers ever say?
Ned says: “Officer, this man is impersonating a foreigner.”
“No law against that I s’pose.”
“Well then he’s harassing me. Askin’ me fer stuff when I don’t know what the hell he’s talking about.”
“Monsieur, je m’appelle Jeb et j’ai voulu seulement—”
“Oh for crissake, it’s Jeb who lives up the road on the second concession.”
“Is that true?”
“Je veux acheter … comment dites-on en anglais … uh … how you say … ham. Only he didn’t say “ham.” He stuck an “eh” on the end of it so’s it come out: “hameh.”
“Fine. You want some hameh. But is it true? What he says? ‘Bout you bein’ local ‘n’ everything?”
“No, no, no, no, no. Je m’appelle Marcel. Je suis … how you say en anglais … I am de twin brudder of Jeb … from France.”
“Oh fer crissake,” says Ned.
Well after the incident in Ned’s Groceries ‘n’ Fertilizer Depot, word gets out that Jeb’s gone as soft in the head as ice cream in mid-July. He goes to Lou’s diner and orders “un burger du jambon” ‘n’ the waitress can’t make out what the hell he’s askin’ fer. ‘N’ pretty soon the cook’s out of the kitchen ‘n’ other customers are complainin’ ‘n’ there’s an unholy row that spills out onto the street. Jeb is standing there blinkin’ in the midday sun and yellin’ about what a horrid horrid place dis is where de foreigner is treated no better den a dog.
But the worst comes later in the afternoon—à l’aprés midi as Jeb would say. There he is, walkin’ down Main Street sayin’ “Bonjour” to everybody he knows when he takes one of those spells of his. He’s had ’em before. I don’t know if they’re serious or not, but they sure do look dramatic. He clutches at his chest and stumbles around, then keels over into the flower bed out in front of the community centre. He shouts “Mon coeur, mon Coeur!” Then, when he’s on his back in front of the community centre: “Oh des fleures si belles.”
Someone calls the paramedics. There are these two hulking guys kneeling in the flowers on either side of Jeb, speaking to him in low voices ‘n’ tryna figure out what’s wrong with him. One of them stands ‘n’ shouts to all the onlookers: “Anyone who can translate for us? It’s a foreigner here and he don’t speak no English.”
There’s some snickers from the crowd, but no one steps forward. The paramedics shrug their shoulders ‘n’ cart Jeb away on a gurney.
Turns out this stunt of his nearly kilt him because he don’t tell the paramedics about his heart medication—or he tells them but in that stupid French of his—so they give him something that reacts with his heart meds and sends his blood pressure into outer space. Later in the day, I visit him in the ER where they’ve got him stuck with an IV ‘n’ hooked up to all kinds of monitors ‘n’ stuff. I sets myself in a chair beside his bed ‘n’ he looks at me ‘n’ smiles with those faded out eyes of his.
“How ya doin’, Jeb?” I says.
He nods ‘n’ sets his hand on mine.
“You learn yerself anything from all this nonsense?”
He nods again.
“What’d you learn?”
“Oh, I dunno.”
I’m expectin’ him to say somethin’ about how it’s a dumb idea to refuse to speak the only language you know how to speak.
But he says, “No, no that’s not it. There was something else. I ferget. Doesn’t matter anyways.”
That’s how it goes fer us. Between the two of us, we should be learnin’ some pretty good lessons. We just can’t remember them is all.